


A Christmas Promise

by sparky955



Category: Man from Uncle - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Off-screen death mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparky955/pseuds/sparky955
Summary: Somethings don't end.  Ever.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elmey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmey/gifts).



The door was struggling not to give way.

I could see slimy fat fingers trying to slide through the gap between the door frame and the door.

I kept screaming, “I don’t want you here. I don’t give my permission for you to be here. You need to go away!”

Cold with fear, I opened my eyes and tried to reorient myself into my reality. I was in my home, in my bed, with my partner warm and snoring against me.

Only a dream, just a dream, not real. Shake it off, roll over, go back to sleep.

Not to be. The cold, empty white-hot fear was wrapped around me and wouldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let me go. Sighing. I slid as silently as I could from our bed and padded to our living room, inching the bedroom door shut as I did. No sense ruining his rest this night.

I grabbed the faded blue patchwork quilt that had been a gift so long ago from April, “Matches all the colors in your eyes, gorgeous," she had said with a wink and a quick grin. I made my way in the dark to my favorite chair placed in the nook of our bay window that faced the sea. A complimentary chair was at its right, as my partner had been at mine in what seemed all of my life. I sat and tried to lose myself in the sightless sound of high tide. Again like my partner, the surety of its presence bedrock certain without the need for confirming vision.

But, the iron clutch of that dream was working hard to prevent me from finding solace in the surf. One did not need a doctorate in psychology to know the basis of the dream nor its representation. Mark had died, with the easy grace with which he lived, surrounded by those he loved and was loved by. Like us, he had survived service to The Command to be granted years of the relative ease of civilian life. Our lives had taken us to different continents, but our pasts kept us intertwined, shared experiences not needing physical presence to maintain a constant friendship.

Mark was gone. April was alone. QED, soon it would be my time to stand without my partner.

Shaking my head, I looked at the darkened Christmas tree stationed at the near the front door. Not exactly the most festive of holiday thoughts to be thinking, Illya Nickovetch. That tree was a lot like the two of us, a melange of decorations both meaningful and random. Our lives hadn’t been random, thought. At first, although the missions were different in name and place and causative event, the constant theme of them was the same. Protecting and serving. And although the two of us were different at first, we too found a constant thread to our partnership. Trust, respect, friendship and love.

Over fifty years. Over fifty years I have known that infuriating, preening, Teflon-coated, capitalistic man still snoring in the other room. I questioned Waverly’s sanity at pairing us until I cracked his façade and discovered the intelligent diplomat, fierce warrior and haunted soul within. The sudden and too early loss of his young wife had mortally wounded him. As a result, he constructed layers and layers of deflective charm and bonhomie toward the goal of no one seeing his pain.

I had seen, as he had recognized like in me. Together we walked in step as partners, certainly not always agreeing and certainly always looking for ways to needle the other. But, together we worked and laughed and bled and sweated and hid and because half of each other’s soul. Because we knew the parts of us we worked like hell to keep private, we were the stronger as partners toward the world.

I am a scientist. I rationally know that one can only replace and repair parts for so long and that eventually, a new chassis is needed. Death is the counterpart to life, the natural progression of living. But, how, _how,_ would I, could I continue after his life ended?

Shuddering, I stood, wrapping the quilt tighter around me and walked to the Christmas tree. I bent to turn on its lights and heard the silent protesting of my spine. _When did we get this old_ I wondered? Inside I still felt and thought, for the most part, like that young man wearing the off the rack non-descript suit and ugly glasses. The twinkling of the multicolored fairy lights reminded me of the twinkle that was still in my partner’s eyes, although he, as I, was acknowledging the physical reality of time on his body.

That dream, again, though. Me, trying to hold back the advance of that natural progression of time. Me, screaming to the wind,  _you can't take him from me, go away._

Ridiculous. Futile, I told myself as I turned from the tree to enter the kitchen to begin tea.  
Terrifying. Too close. I willed my hands to not shake as I quietly filled the tea kettle so as to not wake him.

I don't know how to be me without him anymore. Please, not yet, not yet.  

“Have I grown so boring that you would leave my bed on such a cold and dark morning to brood out here alone?” Napoleon had snuck up behind me to enfold me in his arms.

“I am not brooding," I asserted as I set the kettle and lit the burner. “I am…contemplating.”

“Yeah, well, contemplate this," he muttered as he turned me around in his arms and covered my mouth with his. Fifty years, and his kisses still made my soul soar. "Make that tea herbal," he said with his lips still almost touching mine. “I want to go back to bed and I plan on dragging you with me.”

"And who says I want to go back to bed with you?," I replied, trying to attain my accustomed acidity of deportment. As a response, Napoleon slid his hand down my chest to locate the evidence of  my burgeoning desire to return to our bed. “Oh, that says," I growled. “Not next to a lighted stove and nearly boiling water, you letch. Go and sit, I will function once again as your body slave and bring tea to you.”

“Ummm, nice words, Body and slave.” Smiling and wiggling his eyebrows, he walked to our chairs at the bay window. “No milk, please. I’m watching my girlish figure.”

“Well, that ship has sailed, old friend. But," I said as I placed his mug next to mine on the wooden oval table between our chairs, “I can affirm that the man in my bed has only gotten more desirable with age”. With a pat to his head, I settled back into my chair to sip my tea.”

“So, did I or did I not tell you to not have that second cup of coffee at dinner last night? I told you that much caffeine would keep you awake?’

I shrugged, frantically searching for a witty repost that would deflect him from finding the true reason for my early morning awakening. “It wasn’t the coffee that woke me up. It was your rip-the-wallpaper-off-the walls snoring.”

“We don’t have wallpaper.”

“Exactly," I stated as I reached to replace my mug on the table. Damn, my fingers were still trembling. “I keep waiting”, I quickly said, “for your snoring to rip the nails from the logs. –“

“Illya," he said, taking my hand between his and chafing my fingers. “I know. I’ve been thinking about Mark and April too. And us.”

No, I was _not_  going to have this conversation. “Well, come on. If your snoring kept me up, the least you can do is get something up for me.” I stood, reaching blindly behind me to pull him to his feet and drag him to our bedroom. I couldn’t meet his eyes, not until we were in our bed and I was using both our bodies to try to forget my fear.

“Illya," he said again, standing but pulling me around to face him. “Smart Russian, there are things you haven’t been thinking.” Momentarily opening the quilt still wrapped around to me both share in its warmth and bring my body against his, he continued, “There are parts of the formula that you haven’t recognized.”

“What do you mean?” I still wouldn’t meet his eyes and was concentrating on the bit of chest hair of his that I could see. If I met his eyes, he would see my new wound and find my new pain.

“IK," he said as he both shook and squeezed me in his embrace. “You won’t ever be alone. And, on the other hand, neither will I.”

Sighing with resignation, I raised my head. “How?" I asked flatly without emotion.

  
“With everything that we have been through, with everything we’ve shared, with all the years of doing and being, Illya, death wouldn’t end that. I would go on with you, remembering. And, you would go on with me if you took the point position. I wouldn’t be able to hold you like this, but I’d be beside you every moment of every day. Until we were together again on permanent assignment, I would still be your partner and I would still be your lover and I would still be standing at your side and I promise you will still feel me with you."

“Napoleon," I spoke thickly through unshed tears, “I don’t have the faith that you do.”

“I’m not talking faith, oh ye of little. I’m talking pure science. Energy can never be created or destroyed –“

“Only changed," I completed the statement and looked into his endlessly laughing and loving eyes.

“The energy between us is so strong that _it_ will _never_  end. Everything that’s kept us together lo these many years will _still_ bind us, one to the other. And, I _will_ go on with you, remembering.”

I lowered my head to his shoulder, closed me eyes, breathed in the essense of everything that was him, and realized the validity of his words. It was true, I couldn’t hold back time and aging and, yes, I couldn’t hold back death. But, a temporary physical parting would never dissolve our partnership on every level, co-workers, friends, lovers, soul-mates. Our very DNA was so entwined that we would never be separate from the other, on the level that mattered the most, in our minds.

“When did you get so smart?," I whispered.

“The first time I set my eyes on you, pooseycat. So, come on," he ordered, turning me around and shoving me toward the bedroom. “Let me turn off the Christmas lights then make you sing, _Oh Come All Ye Faithful_.”

“Only you could get lurid with a religious carol.”

“UNCLE CEA manual, page forty-nine, says it's in my job description.”

As I walked to the bedroom, I still knew what lie inexorably ahead, but was comforted greatly by the evidence Napoleon had presented. No matter what, we would be together, and we would go on together, remembering.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
